Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is resting in Caracas military hospital after his Monday early dawn return from Cuba where he spent ten weeks recuperating from cancer surgery. However contrary to other occasions no video or pictures were shown and officials confirmed he has a tracheal tube which limits speech.

Chavez flew in from Havana at 2:30 a.m. and was transported to the Carlos Arevalo Military Hospital, Vice President Nicolas Maduro told Venezuelans on state television. The president was accompanied on his flight back home by Maduro, his daughter Rosa Virginia, his brother Adan and the president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello.

The president’s surprise arrival appeared designed to staunch rising indignation by opposition leaders critical of the secrecy surrounding Chavez’s health and doubtful that he was running the day-to-day affairs of state, as his ministers insisted.

President Chavez has undergone four surgeries in Cuba since June 2011, but the government has yet to say what kind of cancer he has had or detail his prognosis.

The outsize role that Cuba and the Castro brothers government have played in the long saga, with Fidel Castro even delivering news about Chavez’s condition to Venezuelans, had led to a spirited protest in recent days by university students outside Cuba’s embassy in Caracas.

But on Monday, the president’s arrival led to fireworks in Caracas and prompted the president’s die-hard supporters to gather in the city’s main square, the Plaza Bolivar.

“Viva Chavez! Viva the Revolution! Viva the people of Venezuela!” yelled Tania Diaz, an anchor on state television, as she and other crew members celebrated on air.

The president’s return means that he can at last take the oath for the fourth term he won in the October presidential election. After that victory, Chavez started to drop out of the public eye, and on December 10 he flew to Cuba for a surgery that took place a day later.

For 67 days, he was not seen or heard from, as his ministers delivered a mix of vague news about his condition. Chavez missed his January 10 inauguration, though the Supreme Court had ruled that he could be sworn in at a later, unspecified date. The president did not issue any messages via his Twitter account, nor did the government release any photos or video of him while he was in Cuba.

Then, on Friday, the first photographs were released, showing Chavez lying in a hospital bed, flanked by two of his daughters and holding up a copy of Granma, the Cuban state newspaper.

Chavez was using a tracheal tube, Information Minister Ernesto Villegas reported, but he was “conscious, with his intellectual functions intact.”

Villegas also hinted that Chavez would overcome his “delicate circumstances sooner rather than later to accompany his people on the path toward new victories.”

With Chavez’s arrival in Caracas, Villegas said, “there can be no doubt about the democratic institutions working in Venezuela.”

Still, unlike Chavez’s previous triumphant returns from Venezuela during his ordeal with cancer, this one did not come with video or photographs of the president. The president, though, did offer a series of messages via Twitter.

“I am clinging to Christ and trusting my doctors and nurses,” he president wrote. “Onward toward victory always!! We will live and we will triumph!!”

The president also thanked Cuban President Raul Castro, his older brother, Fidel, and the Cuban people for showing “so much love.”

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That CIA cancer sure it taking its time.
That was a pretty dismal picture, propped up and waxy looking he must have had a lot of make-up on and a shot of adrenalin to get his eyes open.
I guess the devil doesn't want him yet.

My best wishes to Chavez and his family, it almost looks like he has done the imposible, his middle name must he Lazarus.
The people spoke and they chose him and his policies, no one can say the Venezuelans didn't know what they were getting, there are NO surprises here.
Now with Correa at the helm in Ecuador, Cristina busily destroying Argentina, the ex Marxist Dilma perpetuating stagnation in Brazil whist spending massive amounts of state funds, Mr nice guy Pepe Mujica throwing up his arms in despair in Uruguay and Chavez back for an encore in Venezuela, it may sound like bad news. What I think will happen is that the stable 3 (Peru, Colombia & Chile) are going to get a big increase in Foreign Direct Investment money that would otherwise have gone to the others. Chile for example closed 2012 with a staggering 63% increase or 10.6% of the GDP over 2011 in FDI. These are HUGE NUMBERS and they mean more products, services and exports at NO cost to the taxpayer, no new debt in fact tax revenue will increase. A win win, thanks dysfunctional regimes of the north...errr..and east. Keep up the good work and promise never to change.

#15 You three are looking at the path to a real opportunity... to become immensely larger and more prosperous . I hope you guys make it work to the benefit of your people. Nourish international trade, keep the corporate greed in check and work bi-laterally and you all will be the regional leaders.

15@ Really you have done a very interesting explanation over what is happening through SA...fortunately for us...and the others members of the Pacific Alliance....!!

So, fingercrossed that they keep the office in their own countries so we can grow faster and bigger than possible if they were in competition....Sorry for the inhabitants of those poor countries going down in the fall, as the tango lirics says.....

@ 15 - You've hit it on the nail. Chile is a perfect example of a democratic country on the move. Viva Chile Viva los chilenos! I just hope Chile's example will show the others how democracies can and should work, mind you, no one has taken on Chile's example for the 25 years so I feel it's unlikely!

How ill is a national security issue, a classified secret. The are serious concerns that is just how ill he is were to get into the wrong hands, widespread democracy might break out.
How ill is dead considered anyway?